GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting
AGENDA
No permission yet from Washington to award track contracts.
The attorneys have reviewed the cost package and recommended changes. These were made and Phil is reviewing the package.
The number of projects supported this week was about the same as the last few weeks. 17 projects in 29 observing sessions, including a VLB session. Average setup time was just under 12 minutes. We had 12.5 hrs f maintenance, 7 hrs of software tests, and 4.5 hrs of receiver checkouts.
Lost time was 13.7 hrs (about 9% of the time scheduled for observing and receiver checkouts). The winds, especially those Tuesday night, accounted for about half of the lost time. The major causes of lost time were:
- Winds : 6.6 hrs
- El Brake Fault : 2.9 hrs
- Astrid : 2.2 hrs
- Snow : 0.9 hrs
- Spectral Processor : 0.7 hrs
- All Others : 0.4 hrs
Jeremy Darling's project was plagued by RFI at ~340 MHz but the actual fraction of the time he lost is not known. There have been a few e-mails and discussions between the support scientist, Gary Anderson, the RFI group as to whether we can avoid similar problems. It's not clear from the logs as to why Astrid is having problems. A few observers are commenting about the Spectrometer's 'bad lag' problem -- should we prioritize the proposed filler fix?
The support schedule is now in place through mid May.
Last Week
=========
Observations for proposals
GBT06A-053, GBT06A-043, GBT05A-020,
GBT06A-044, GBT06A-066, GBT05A-033,
GBT06A-068, GBT05B-044, GBT04C-043,
GBT05C-022, BB217 , GBT05C-023,
GBT05C-046, GBT06A-038, GBT06A-027,
GBT06A-028
Completed proposals
GBT06A-043, GBT05B-044, GBT06A-028,
BB217
Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
GBT06A-053 [F ] Scott Ransom
Continued Timing of the Binary and Millisecond
Pulsars in Terzan 5
GBT05A-020 [ P ] Yancy Shirley
The Chemical and Dynamical State of Purportedly
Nascent Pre-protostellar Cores in Lynds 1521
GBT06A-032 [ P ] Jim Braatz
A Search for the First SiO Megamaser
GBT06A-066 [ B] David Nidever
HI Mapping of the Extended Magellanic Stream
GBT05A-033 [F ] Ingrid Stairs
Shapiro Delay in the PSR J1802-2124 System
GBT04C-031 [ P ] Paul Kondratko
Monitoring of Five NGC4258-like Water Megamasers
Discovered with the GBT and the DSN
GBT06A-068 [ P ] Yancy Shirley
The Kinematical and Chemical Structure of
Pre-protostellar Cores
GBT06A-049 [ P ] Tony Readhead
Definitive Detection of Excess Arcminute Scale
CMB Anisotropies
GBT06A-027 [ B] Karen Masters
Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS
GBT06A-038 [ B] Tom Troland
Magnetic Fields in the Galactic Halo via the HI
Zeeman Effect
GBT04A-038 [ P ] Brian Mason
GBT Observations of Radio Sources in CBI
Intrinsic Anisotropy Fields
GBT06A-009 [ P ] Jim Condon
H_0 and Dark Energy
GBT06A-050 [F ] Steve Begin
Timing of the Binary and Millisecond Pulsars in
M28, NGC6624 and NGC6522
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup
Contact Information for 03/30/2006 - 04/13/2006
=======================================
Proposal PI Bands Email [NRAO contact]
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06A-053 Scott Ransom S sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-054 Paul Demorest L demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-065 Rachel Friesen K rfriesen@uvastro.phys.uvic.ca [Toney Minter]
GBT05B-042 Michael Kramer L8 mkramer@jb.man.ac.uk [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-022 Jim Braatz K jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-044 Jeremy Darling 8 jdarling@origins.colorado.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06A-066 David Nidever L dnidever@virginia.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT06A-011 Mike Blanton L blanton@nyu.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT05C-042 Scott Ransom S sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-056 Paul Kondratko K pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-046 Glen Langston U glangsto@nrao.edu [Glen Langston]
GBT05C-032 Yancy Shirley BQ yshirley@as.arizona.edu [Ron Maddalena]
GBT06A-068 Yancy Shirley K yshirley@as.arizona.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT05C-033 Marko Krco L marko@astro.cornell.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT06A-003 Chris Clemens L clemens@physics.unc.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT05B-034 Ingrid Stairs L istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-004 William Reach K reach@ipac.caltech.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT05C-023 Fernando Camilo 8 fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-059 Nissim Kanekar Q nkanekar@nrao.edu [Dana Balser]
GBT06A-049 Tony Readhead B acr@astro.caltech.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT06A-027 Karen Masters L kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT06A-038 Tom Troland L troland@pa.uky.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT06A-006 Wouter Vlemmings K wouter@jb.man.ac.uk [Karen O'Neil]
GBT05C-026 Tom Devlin XQ devlin@physics.rutgers.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT06A-018 Joe McMullin Q jmcmulli@nrao.edu [Dana Balser]
GBT06A-019 Rachel Osten S ro6b@Virginia.EDU [Ryan Ransom]
GBT06A-009 Jim Condon K jcondon@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT01A-005 Barry Turner Q bturner@nrao.edu [Frank Ghigo]
Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> March April May
Astronomy ~ 604 [222] 538 [491] 505 [305]
Maintenance ~ 33 [034] 16 [102] 20 [068]
Test & Comm ~ 105 [021] 148 [046] 150 [040]
Un-assigned ~ 2 19 69
Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
Active checkout - 0
On Hold - 22
Schedule - 60
Completed - 467
Current backlog [hours prior to 06A*] = 1011
[2001:2(1), 2002:88(2), 2003:19(1), 2004:161(11), 2005:613(30), 2006:128(3)]
Backlog excluding 111 hrs of monitoring projects after 06A = 900
Total time to discharge [hours] = 2676
Includes 315 hours of monitoring after trimester 06A
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06A
Operations
Only call-in was related to RFI in PF1. The C-band refrigerator is being serviced next week.
Development
Ka RX, Zpectrometer
Second of three phase switch driver circuit boards has been designed and
is going out for fabrication.
Lab Spectrometer IF System
Eagle PC Board design of amplifier bias, attenuator and mixer boards is
in progress.
ORM Power Divider:
MMICS have arrived and are installed. The buffered power divicer is ready to be tested.
IF System:
Layout completed for amplifier upgrades to converter filter module.
Q-band:
Ordered attenuator and absorber materials for use in testing, and received Q-Band feed from shop. Designed circular waveguide termination and delivered drawings to shop. Collected foam and radome material for test dewar vacuum window.
C-band Upgrade:
Work continues on the C-band dewar rebuild. Overall size and layout of the new dewar is mostly finalized. Currently testing various coaxial cables for use between 15 and 300K inside the dewar. Also, testing various materials for their thermal conductivity properties. Refined the spread-sheet analysis. Continued pricing components and modeling mechanical layout. Worked on interface specification between the IF Rack and the C-band
Receiver.
MLLN 140 Project:
Shop finished the housings for the tunable IF system, and one circuit board was fitted in. Most parts have arrived.
16Mar06 - Norrod, Anderson, Simon, Stennes, Watts, White
(Report submitted by RandyMcCullough)
Digital Group Status 10-MAR-06 THRU 16-MAR-06
***Operations, Problem summary***
No significant problems to report.
During Monday's maintenance period, JasonRay? and JackNelson? repaired one LVDT Module which facilitated re-activation of 16 actuators.
***Development***
Cal-Tech Continuum Backend (CCB):
Further testing of the reported 8-volt power supply start-up problem has been suspended until construction of the second CCB is completed. (It should be noted that this doesn't appear to be an issue with the First Article currently installed on the GBT.)
RogerNorrod? requested that construction of the DC Power Input Modules be transferred from Chuck Niday to Jonah Bauserman. This
process has uncovered some minor parts shortages which JasonRay? is currently addressing. These shortages involve commonly available
parts and are not expected to adversely impact our efforts to complete the second CCB.
JasonRay? and RandyMcCullough spent last Friday afternoon (10-MAR-06) reviewing our suite of FPGA test personalities and going over various sub-assembly test procedures. Actual testing of Daughter Cards is expected to resume the week of 20-MAR-06.
Progress has also been made on the Blue Hose twin-ax cable assemblies. A total of 18 short cables (16 plus 2 spares) and 4 long
cables are complete. This leaves a balance of 14 long cables to be made. Progress continues on this daily as a background task.
Test Spectrometer
No news to report.
LTA Upgrade
Given last week's unanimous decision to eliminate PULSAR support from the new LTA design, considerable effort was expended in assessing
impact to on-going design efforts. A fairly detailed block diagram depicting the resultant simplified architecture is now being prepared for
review prior to proceeding with the new design. This block diagram should be completed during the week of 20-MAR-06.
Miscellaneous
ALMA
JasonRay? and JackNelson? spent 4 days troubleshooting and repairing Bias Module Boards.
***Plans***
- Continue CCB construction...
- Continue Test Spectrometer commissioning...
- Complete block diagram of new LTA design...
- Continue ALMA support as needed...
This ends Week 4 of 6 in the second development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC22006?. Integration testing begins early next week, and Jim will be visiting to do regression testing next weekend.
The following Observation Management items reported last week are all ready for testing: (1) a new Observing Directive which will allow pulsar observers to change the target data directory at any time in a Scheduling Block (2) removal of the behavior of using the previously set scan duration within a Scan Type all non-Auto* Scan Types, (3) changing the Location and Offset classes to allow subtraction of Offsets from Offsets and Offsets from Locations (i.e. offset1 = offset2 - offset3 or location1 = location2 - offset) and (4) adding an Offset argument to Slew. Antenna FITS modifications are also ready for the testing cycle.
Work also continues to get GFM to successfully display CCB data. The goal is to have this ready for the regular round of tests that will begin next week.
Operational support for this week was light and included helping Tom Troland get his VNC viewer working.
We also interviewed Betty Stobie on Wednesday for the software engineering vacancy. She has been working on IDL development for image processing for the NICMOS IR camera that is attached to the HST for the past several years, and actually worked in GB in the 1970’s on POPS.
Not much to report this week due to tons of observing (we finally have the start of a timing solution for Ter5ad), a student visitor from Germany (who I'm betting will help us find more Ter5 MSPs), proposal deadlines, and a huge failure of 3TB worth of RAIDs on my cluster in CV.
spigot2's RAID freaked out 3 times in a ~40 hour period, though.... grrr. Am hoping I can get up there next week for ~2 days to work on this.
MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen
- The 43m tracking has resumed. We've had some hiccups due to brakes going on during slew to spacecraft start position, but Tim W. has a fix. The operators will be monitoring the 43m at the telescope until
the end of March. Then we move to remote operations, from the GBT/OVLBI control rooms.
-- CarlBignell - 16 Mar 2006
Revision r1.11 - 17 Mar 2006 - 14:26 GMT - CarlBignell
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